Wednesday, September 10, 2008

1.0.5 is up! (Yeah, old news)

If you haven't heard or read the comments in my previous post, the new version is out. If you don't have it and you're reading this what are you doing here? Go get it!

A few miscellaneous comments for you.

Since Apple rejected and I had to resubmit my app, there are two other things that got into the release that had been slated for 1.0.6. Not a big deal but here they are anyway:
- Less restrictive URL linking.
- changed status bar to black
- changed buttons on top bar in target to be both black and the names to be "More" and "Return".

As a reminder, the waypoint field is for entering the letter/number codes for an individual geocache. You can find these in the top right portion of the geocaching page on geocaching.com. An example would be something like GC12345.

I have just downloaded the new official 2.1 SDK. It appears that apple has not actually delivered some of the features that were in the early beta with core location. From what I can tell it hasn't changed in any useful way (to us) with 2.1. Because of this I will spend some more time with the compass code and see if I can smooth it out a bit more. I'm a bit disappointed here, but I am still glad I took a wait and see approach to this. Expect more changes here.

I'm planning on revisiting the maps link from within the webpage with 2.1 and see if that is taken care of or if it is still a problem. I'm not hopeful, but it's worth checking out and seeing if Apple has fixed this issue.

As promised, here is the URL scheme for sending coordinates to Geopher Lite:

geopherlite://setTarget;lat=12.345;lon=6.789;waypoint=GC12345

You can actually type something like the above into safari and test it out if you'd like. You can embed links like this in web pages and it will open in Geopher Lite if you are on the iPhone. You can also call Geopher Lite with this URL scheme from other iPhone applications if you're a developer and wondering about that. Go crazy, I'd love to hear what people do with this.

Kai, one of our beta testers, has written up a tutorial that you can see here which will allow you to get a web page set up that redirects from safari to Geopher Lite. I want to note here that he has a jailbroken app do some of the lifting, but I am working with him to see if we can get this information via Geopher Lite instead of having to rely on a jailbroken app. And you can still use this method without jailbreaking your iPhone, you just don't get current coordinate distance. Thanks for the work on this Kai!

As always, post comments, suggestions and feedback here. Thanks for using Geopher Lite!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there a way after hitting the map button to see where a cache is at, then going back to Geopher and wanting to see the Cache Description/Hints etc., again? When I do this the screen is gone and I need to start the search over again. I shutoff the auto reload but that does not do it. Thanks

Tapani said...

Oh my! I love the compas rotation. Still buggnested, twitchy and jumpy, but when the kinks are straightened this will be a very enjoyable app to cache with.

I have not tried the rotation by foot yet but on my bicycle it seems working quite nicely. The jumpines I think is more due to bad GPS-lock than app-code.

All I lack is goggle maps running under the compas rotating acordingly giving the live position at the same time.

All the best.

DadGuy said...

tapani, I'm not sure what you mean by "google maps running under the compass rotating accordingly giving the live position at the same time"?

anonymous, I've looked into this some but haven't found a way to do it with apple's tools. I would like to have this happen, I'll see what I can do here, I understand the desire with this. I'll look into that a bit more hopefully this weekend.

Anonymous said...

Couple things I would like to see.
1) Same as others, google maps with the cache icons on it, just like you see in geocaching.com
2) When in compass mode show other close geocaches, have it always updating, this way when I am driving I can see if there are any close by. even show what direction they are on the compass using icons or numbers.

Of course this would need the GPX file loaded so it wouldn't been until your full version.

Tapani said...

dadguy,
I meant that Id like to have the google maps showing on the compas page. So the center of the compas is the location of self and the map would rotate with the compas rotation. I think it would be a nightmare to code and break most of the apple guidelines but one can always dream:)
For now the google map is a separate part of the app but I'd prefere if it would be part of the direction pointer. Maybe the whole idea is too complex for the lite version and should go int the full version if the function is possible at all...
I'm not sure how to explain what I meant because english is not my native language.

All the best-

John C said...

I have been keeping up with the comments but I was wondering if I might have missed a discussion about GPX files. can we load them and view them with geopher or at all on the iPhone? Thanks! I published my first to caches today in SLC and am having a blast with the family. And its all thanks to the iPhone, Geopher Lite and the occasional help from a couple Garmins that I own! Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't seem to use Geopher to find caches. Luckily I have my Garmin GPSr as a backup.

DadGuy said...

Anonymous, what kinds of problems are you having?

dh, no GPX support as of yet.

tapani, I think I understand what you are saying. I agree it would be a neat feature, but don' thold your breath. =)

Anonymous said...

Just wondering if you had any further news or updates coming? Seems like it takes at least a week after submit before Apple reviews,etc.

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DadGuy has been working with apple computers since the mac classic. I love games and puzzles and like to solve problems. I'm having a blast developing for the iPhone and iPad.